A new Economist/YouGov poll of registered voters found that the two words Americans most commonly chose to describe Donald Trump were “corrupt” (53%) and “dangerous” (51%). Fewer than half of registered Republican voters were willing to describe him as “honest,” according to Axios.

The findings are consistent with a Gallup poll released earlier this month. It found that 89% of Americans believe corruption in government is widespread—the highest level recorded in the two decades Gallup has asked the question, and a higher figure than in any other advanced industrialized democracy.

The same day, CBS News published photos that U.S. service members had smuggled out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The images showed extensive damage to barracks, facilities and U.S. aircraft caused by Iranian drones and missiles. The Pentagon’s inspector general has reported $3.7 billion in equipment and building losses, along with about 60 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged. The New Republic also reported on the damage.

Those figures contradict Trump’s statement the previous week that Iran had caused “no damage” and “no nothing” to U.S. facilities and troops. Eighteen service members are reported dead and hundreds more hospitalized. Trump called the losses “small potatoes” and declined to visit wounded troops during a visit to Walter Reed several weeks ago. One soldier whose identity was withheld told CBS News, “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

The polling and the conflicting accounts of the damage raise a broader question: What happens when people lose trust in their government and political leaders, and how can that trust be restored?

The writer says he saw the consequences of that kind of breakdown firsthand while traveling around the world on behalf of a German international relief organization. He describes the lessons as both important and grim.

Experiences in Bogotá and Kaliningrad

During several trips to Bogotá, Colombia, in the 1990s, undertaken on behalf of Salem and later discussed in The Prophet’s Way, the writer recalls an immigration officer stamping his passport and warning him, “Mister Tourist, be careful.” At dinner that first night, he was advised not to take taxis or trust the police. A German woman who had lived in Bogotá for 15 years reportedly flinched whenever the doorbell rang.

The woman’s husband’s office manager, described as an ordinary middle-class man, had been forced to watch at gunpoint as 15 armed men broke into his home looking for his 16-year-old daughter. When they discovered that she was not there, they abducted his wife, who was a friend of the writer’s dinner companion.

For a month, the kidnappers called the husband every night and made his wife cry over the telephone while he emptied his credit cards, bank accounts and retirement account. She was released only after he mortgaged his condominium and surrendered the remainder of his money and credit. The writer says she was barely able to speak afterward and that the family was trying to borrow enough money from friends to leave Colombia and return to Germany.

The nun who ran the church where the visitors were staying—buildings with steel doors and concrete walls—warned them against going to restaurants after dark and gave them the telephone number of what she described as the city’s only reliable taxi company. The writer also says that off-duty police officers and soldiers had organized “hunt clubs” to shoot street children for sport.

One morning, while driving with Horst Von Heyer, the writer passed a billboard advertising an upscale gated community whose smiling guards carried AK-47s. Nearby, they saw a teenage boy lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, with a uniformed man standing over him holding a gun. No one in the vehicle spoke, the writer says, because the scene had become ordinary.

The account presents Bogotá as one example of what can happen when citizens no longer trust their government. In the writer’s view, that vacuum is filled by two groups: predators who conclude that “open season” has begun, and strongman politicians who promise to restore order through violence and authoritarian control.

He points to what he describes as contemporary examples of predation, including corporations exploiting consumers, banks taking advantage of customers, health insurers denying care to increase profits, and oil companies and their Republican allies deceiving the public about climate change.

The writer says he observed the second pattern in Kaliningrad, Russia, during the 1990s. Four Russian police officers reportedly stopped his vehicle for speeding and let the travelers go after they gave the officers a box of expensive chocolates. Around Lenin Square, kiosks controlled by organized crime were described as “the safest parts of town,” while vodka cost less than bottled water.

Six years later, he writes, Russia—exhausted by crime and oligarchic corruption—turned to a KGB colonel who promised to make the trains run on time. The writer says Russia has not held a free election since.

He argues that El Salvador followed a similar pattern. After what he characterizes as a corrupt government of “grifters and hustlers” had impoverished the country and hollowed out its middle class, Salvadorans elected Nayib Bukele, who describes himself as “Central America’s coolest dictator.” Bukele then arrested and imprisoned approximately 2% of the country’s population. The writer says the policy reduced crime but ended democracy altogether.

The writer says he has seen similar developments in Peru, the Philippines, Uganda, South Sudan, Darfur and elsewhere, and now sees the same danger in the United States as “predators and fascists” operate with impunity.

Allegations involving Trump and past administrations

Trust, the writer argues, is the essential foundation of human relationships. Restoring it after betrayal can take years and requires full disclosure, genuine contrition or explanation, and a meaningful change in conduct. In a republic, he says, trustworthiness must begin at the top. That standard also makes accountability a process rather than a slogan: allegations require evidence, independent investigation and, where appropriate, adjudication before institutions can credibly claim that justice has been done.

The article then makes a series of allegations against Trump. It claims that he cheated on every one of his wives and persuaded supporters to provide a combined $3.81 billion for the $TRUMP and $MELANIA digital coins before their value fell 97%. It further claims that Trump pocketed the difference and made another $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency during the first year of his second presidency. Reports on the Trump coin and related financial activity were published by Yahoo Finance and Fortune.

The article also alleges that killings and imprisonments have been carried out in Trump’s name and under his direction. It says that, in January, masked agents killed Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, on the streets of Minneapolis. Both are described as U.S. citizens.

According to the article, the administration withheld evidence of the killings from state prosecutors for six months and physically blocked state investigators. It says that no one had been charged as of the time of publication. Reporting on the federal and state investigations appeared at NPR and PBS NewsHour.

The writer places these allegations within what he describes as a more than 50-year pattern of political misconduct and impunity:

• He says Richard Nixon committed treason by disrupting the Vietnam peace talks to help win the 1968 election, then repeatedly broke the law and accepted bribes while in office. President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, declaring that the “long national nightmare” was over, but the writer argues that the pardon merely began the next phase.
• He alleges that Ronald Reagan reached an agreement with Iran to hold U.S. hostages until after the 1980 election in order to harm Jimmy Carter. When a special prosecutor began investigating, George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, Bill Barr, advised Bush to pardon six Iran-Contra defendants on Christmas Eve 1992, several months before Bush left office. Bill Clinton, the writer says, chose to ignore the matter and “look to the future.”
• The article alleges that Florida Governor Jeb Bush purged approximately 100,000 Black Floridians from voter rolls before the 2000 election, helping his brother George W. Bush win Florida by 537 votes. It further claims that Clarence Thomas, appointed to the Supreme Court by their father, cast the decisive vote to stop a recount that would have exposed the alleged misconduct, while Al Gore allowed the matter to pass without consequence.

The article says these examples demonstrate that decisions by Ford, Clinton, Gore and others were made by people who believed that overlooking limited Republican wrongdoing would protect U.S. institutions. Instead, the writer argues, those decisions signaled to future political actors that crimes against democracy would carry little cost.

The writer then turns to Trump’s conduct after losing the 2020 election. He alleges that Trump committed numerous crimes during his first presidential term and demanded that Georgia’s secretary of state “find” more than 11,000 votes. He also says Trump sent a mob to the Capitol to murder the vice president and the speaker of the House.

The article criticizes Attorney General Merrick Garland for waiting 15 months before appointing Jack Smith and pursuing the matter, calling the response insufficient and untimely. The writer argues that the cumulative effect of earlier pardons and failures to prosecute led from Nixon concealing bribes in the Oval Office, through Reagan’s dealings with Iran and the alleged manipulation of Florida in 2000, to Trump selling meme coins from the White House and implicitly encouraging agents to shoot citizens in the street.

Lessons from other democracies

The article cites several countries that, it says, recovered after confronting political crimes:

• Argentina tried the ruling military junta in a civilian court in 1985, only two years after the dictatorship ended, while the generals still potentially could have retaken the government. Background on the proceedings is available through the Trial of the Juntas reference.
• South Korea impeached, removed from office and sentenced President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison 15 months after he attempted to declare a state of emergency and martial law to avoid the consequences of his party’s electoral losses. The article characterizes those actions as comparable to conduct Trump is openly considering. NBC News reported on the case.
• Brazil arrested and convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a January 6-style coup and sentenced him to 27 years in prison. His generals were also convicted, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The writer says none of those countries collapsed. Instead, he argues, their democratic institutions were strengthened by holding former political leaders accountable. He says all remain democracies and suggests that a similar process may soon occur in Hungary.

The article also discusses South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Although often viewed as a gentle alternative to criminal prosecution, the writer says it was not intended to be lenient. People who failed to make complete public confessions were supposed to be imprisoned. Because no one was imprisoned under that provision, he argues, many South Africans still regard the wounds as open. In his view, the government damaged trust even while attempting to rebuild it.

The proposed response

The writer says Americans increasingly understand that there must be consequences for alleged wrongdoing, including betraying the United States, Ukraine and democracy on behalf of Vladimir Putin; looting the Treasury and awarding no-bid contracts to friends and business associates; traveling internationally at public expense while receiving billions from dictators under the guise of negotiating peace; killing unarmed civilians in the Caribbean and children in Iran; polluting the air in exchange for campaign contributions; attempting to overthrow the government and manipulate the 2026 election; sending armed, masked agents into the streets to intimidate and kill people while organizing them into the country’s largest domestic spying operation; and providing trillions of dollars in tax breaks, financed by public borrowing, to billionaire donors seeking to influence the 2026 election.

The article argues that Democrats seeking the votes of the 89% of Americans who believe corruption is widespread must publicly promise to prosecute those responsible. It calls for an end to what it describes as the “Garland pauses,” “Ford pardons,” and decisions by Clinton, Gore and Barack Obama to look the other way.

The writer specifically names Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, ICE agents, cryptocurrency intermediaries, Abu Dhabi royals and people who purchase pardons as figures who should not be exempt from scrutiny.

The proposed first steps include immediate subpoenas, legislation establishing an independent counsel with a substantial budget, and public trials modeled on proceedings in Argentina, Brazil and South Korea. The article also calls for the impeachment of what it describes as corrupt Cabinet billionaires and their associates, from Trump downward, as well as disclosure of alleged complicity by congressional Republicans.

The writer concludes that Democrats cannot campaign on restoring trust while continuing to offer what he compares to “just one more chance.” He says four Republican presidents have openly broken the law or committed treason for political power and argues that the pattern must end. The article closes by urging readers to prepare to vote and encourage others to do the same.